Because as long as there's demand for CRPGS, there will be CRPGS....from the big companies too. It would be dumb, as a game developer that makes RPGS, to completely ignore a part of the market, especially if there is supposedly no other games aimed at that market. There'd be no competition for it. However, other developers aren't going to let that first company get the whole market, so they'll make games for it too, and so on.
As for indie development, online distribution is making it more and more viable. Stardock has a few games that it distributes (not necessarily RPGs though), and I wouldn't be surprised to see smaller developers utilize Steam to distribute their games as well.